1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to cooling of computing systems environments and more particularly large computing systems environments that include one or more servers.
2. Description of Background
The industry trend has been to continuously increase the number of electronic components inside computing systems. Given the limited footprint of many computing systems, a continuous increase in the number of heat generating components creates challenging heat dissipation issues. These issues if not dealt with adequately can harm the structural and data integrity of the computer system, making the effect felt both at a system and module level.
Most electronic packages or nodes in large environments are housed in stacks disposed in frames that resemble racks or cages. Traditionally, these electronic packages have been cooled by forced air cooling using air moving devices, such as fans and blowers, selectively disposed somewhere in the environment as to allow optimum air flow. These air moving devices are often designed to displace hot air away from the components by creating parallel air flow paths that circulate through the rack or cage like frame or structure.
As the packaging densities increase, however, the air cooling solutions are becoming more prohibitive and costly. In addition, air cooling has other associated costs in the form of unwanted acoustic and energy consumption characteristics. In large data centers that house many computing environments in close proximity, the heat dissipation issue is exacerbated even more. In such cases, cooling costs and feasibility of providing air cooling have become a burden to many businesses that rely on their data centers.
In recent years, direct or indirect liquid cooling has become a more attractive option for the designers of computing systems. Immersion or direct liquid cooling has been shown to be substantially less burdensome both in terms of energy costs and resource allocations, especially for use in data centers. The prior art currently being practiced, however, whether air cooled or water cooled is limited in its offerings. It is a concern that current methods being used cannot adequately provide for future generation designs. Consequently, a solution is needed to make the server environment quieter and more energy efficient while providing heat dissipation solutions that can extend beyond current systems designs and can be practically applicable in fabrication of future generation environments.